“Well, but Alex, I don’t understand. You were very good friends at the bottom, after all; you can’t have anything really to repent of towards him.”
“Oh, haven’t I though?” was the reply. “It was more the other fellows’ doing than my own, to be sure, and yet, after all, it was worse, knowing all about him as I did; but somehow, every one, grandmamma and all of you, had been preaching up to me all my life that cousin Fred was to be such a friend of mine. And then when he came to school, there he was—a fellow with a pink and white face, like a girl’s, and that did not even know how to shy a stone, and cried for his mamma! Well, I wish I could begin it all over again.”
“But do you mean that he was really a—a—what you call a Miss Molly?”
“Who said so? No, not a bit of it!” said Alex. “No one thought so in reality, though it was a good joke to put him in a rage, and pretend to think that he could not do anything. Why, it took a dozen times more spirit for him to be first in everything than for me, who had been knocked about all my life. And he was up to anything, Bee, to anything. The matches at foot-ball will be good for nothing now; I am sure I shan’t care if we do win.”
“And the prize,” said Beatrice, “the scholarship!”
“I have no heart to try for it now! I would not, if Uncle Geoffrey had not a right to expect it of me. Let me see: if Fred is well by the summer, why then—hurrah! Really, Queenie, he might get it all up in no time, clever fellow as he is, and be first after all. Don’t you think so?”
Queen Bee shook her head. “They say he must not read or study for a very long time,” said she.
“Yes, but six months—a whole year is an immense time,” said Alex. “O yes, he must, Bee! Reading does not cost him half the trouble it does other people; and his verses, they never fail—never except when he is careless; and the sure way to prevent that is to run him up for time. That is right. Why there!” exclaimed Alex joyfully, “I do believe this is the very best thing for his success!” Beatrice could not help laughing, and Alex immediately sobered down as the remembrance crossed him, that if Fred were living a week hence, they would have great reason to be thankful.
“Ah! they will all of them be sorry enough to hear of this,” proceeded he. “There was no one so much thought of by the fellows, or the masters either.”
“The masters, perhaps,” said Beatrice; “but I thought you said there was a party against him among the boys?”